4.8 and Content Libraries
JOdel
Posts: 6,255
Okay, things were working reasonably all right -- considering that I've still not found whatever is causing my trip to computer hell with the new computer/. And now suddenly I tried to open up an existing file and all of my textures -- many of which are shaders, others of which are manually applied -- are missing. I have flat white geometry except where the diffuse color has been modified.
Now, I've noticed that 4.8 suddenly can't figure out what content library I'm working from. I'll have applied a shader from the shader library and then I'll load a prop or a garment from one of those libraries and it will ask me where the textures are, and when I go to locate the texture, I'll see that the program thinks I'm still in shaders.
Plus, once I've shown it where the textures are, it won't remember if I try to load another instance of the same prop or garment, but at leat it *usually* doesn't think I'm still in the shader library. (or maybe that's just the OS that is keeping track, not Studio).
The textures are *there*. If I choose something and open the Surfaces pane the textures are all in the list. But eve if I goe to the diffues and choose the texture, it doesn't apply in the viewscreen.
However, once I go into the surfaces pane, or ifi I start turning things off from the little eye icon in the scene list, I start getting something like the attached: which shows that it does at least know about the applied surfaces, even if it won't display them. Because this only displays until I try to turn something wlse off whenI'm back to a blinding white scene.
I've done a reinstall -- although it was justy over the top of the previous install. I didn't deinstall and then reinstall.
Just opened up another complex scene and the same thing. Virtually nothing comes in textured. Although I get the same low-res dark view intermittently. Opened up a less complex scene. The same thing. Opened up a scene which was only one character in costume and a light set. Same thing.
Everything was fine yesterday evening. Today everything is broken. I didn't make any changes. What gives?
ETA: I also noticed with the character file that my floor is missing. The viewport control says show floor. The floor is shown in the outer viewport. But the floor is invisible inside the custom render window.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
224 S 200 W, Suite #250
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
I am assuming that you set the pointers in the database to the correct directory location, and have done a scan of those directories?
They were working fine up to not terribly long ago.
I finally gave up and deinstalled 4.8 and reinstalled 4.7. But the same thing is going on there, too. I suspect that i'm going to have to dump all the content management settings and build them anew.
No idea what happened between yesterday and today. But nothing seems to be connected to its texture files any more.
NO...
In all likelyhood, it has nothing to do with the database or the installed content...but either the default location (and if you use DIM, it's default location) isn't mapped in the Content Directory Manager or there is a nested content directory...
Can you post a screenshot of the content folders in your operating system's file manager AND a shot of the mapping in the Content Director Manager (Preferences > Content Library > Content Directory Manager...expand both Studio and Poser formats).
Okay. There isn't room to get them all in one screenshot. So there's overlap.
I've been using this system of organization ever since the inadvertant disk wipe of January 2012. Once I saw I had to rebuild my content libraries I split everything up by category, Never have had a problem with it, and I doubt that it's the problem now.
Of course with so many separate libraries I never took to the idea of DIM. I install everything manually.
The thing is that there was *no problem* with opening existing files (and the files aren't *that* old. I built them all in the last couple of months) until today. Yes, the program would make me go and find the textures when i was adding something new, but once it was in, it was in.
Is the volume an internal drive? Is it possible that the volume name has gotten reassigned because the drive wasn't available?
No, the content libraries have their own external drive. That way I can hitch the drive to the old computer and work, if I need to.
I suspect I'm going to need to.
Okay. Curiouser and curiouser. It isn't just existing scenes that come in as clay renders. It's that *everything* comes in as a clay render. Every. Single. Thing.
Which was a hint. Sure enough, even though I never touched it, somehow the shading type had managed to get shifted to Smooth Shaded instead of Texture Shaded. So that answered that part of the problem.
The problem isn't over though. It turns out that somehow Studio *really does* seem to think that all the textures for everything now live in the textures of the Shader runtime, instead of the texture folders of their own runtimes. No idea how that happened either. But it says so in the path it's trying (unsuccessfully) to follow. It is to be hoped that after I show it where all the textures are it will open the file without further glitching.
Will be back to report once i finish the marathon of telling it where all the textures live.
Sounds like the volume name/drive has been reassigned...unfortunately I can't recall how to clear out what was there and have the OS 'start over' with the external drives...other than remapping EVERYTHING in Studio.
One of the dangers of making that kind of 'organized' content is that troubleshooting 50 or so content folders is a real pain.
Yes, DS treats all the content folders as one big content folder, so the relative path to the textures is all that matters. The only reason it seems to be looking in the Shaders runtime is because that's the first one.
I figured as much. Well this wasn't a problem in 4.6, and when I moved up to 4.7 it just carried over. But DS4.8 seems to have broken it. I've stepped back to 4.7, and after an hour of telling it where to find each batch of textures it finally opened the scene wothout further hassle.
Now I have to hope that it will save the paths when I save the file. I'm going to save a 2nd copy with a different name, just to hedge my bets. But I can't count on it working.
I *may* reinstall 4.8 if things hold together. But I suspect that every file I open is going to be the same story.
*sigh* That's what I get for building complex scenes...
This sounds like the traditional "External Drive Hell", which happens when the drive disconnects when it goes to sleep or the machine goes to sleep.
If you start terminal.app and type cd /Volumes <return> and then type ls <return>, you will most probably see YourDrive YourDrive_1 YourDrive_2 , one for each time the drive fell off and OS X remounted it when it came back. The ugly thing here is that Finder "Hides" this mount point change, so you can only spot it using terminal.
Now, the content sits on /Volumes/YourDrive/MyLibrary/Runtime/Textures/Stuff/file.jpg, but it is not there any more, it is at /Volumes/YourDrive_1/MyLibrary/Runtime/Textures/Stuff/file.jpg, but that's not where DS is looking.
The easiest way to solve this is to "dismount the drive from finder", then manually in /Volumes do rmdir YourDrive_1 <return> etc etc and then mount the drive again, or simply reboot. It's on my todo list to write a small hack that fixes this, but that list is way too long at th moment...
In other words, it's not a 4.8 problem...
Right.
Anyway I am pleased to report that this screwup was all due to the settings having shifted without my input. I've never used "Smooth Shaded" in my life, so i've NO idea why the shading style was suddenly set to it. And if I'd found that in the first place, I could have fixed it without further fallout.
As it is, I've reorganized the content list of all my content libraries, so I'm probably going to have to go through locate hel whenever I open anything that's already built. At any rate, after spending an hour+ locating the textures of the scene that started all this, and saving it, reopening it has thrown me no new hassles.
So this one can be listed as solved.
A couple of the others (like the missing morph import) is still being intractible, but this issue here, was *much* more of a stumbling block.
Well, so much for easy fixes.
And suddenly my content library drive *is* dismounting on me (didn't appear to be doing *that* until today, but the missing content has been plagueing me since the 26th.). So I am going to have to do the fix Totte described.
Well, I finally had the time to stop and try to do the fix. So I entered the cd /Volumes <return> in Terminal, and this is what I got. No list of volumes whatsoever.
I did the manual dismount and a reboot, but it hasn't fixed anything. It looks like I have a slew of undead files.
Fortunately, it's mostly things like wigs and jewelery which come in as grey blocks. But there are a couple of figures, and even though I can load the base figure independently, trying to merge the file with the original just brings the original in as grey blocks.
your screenshot shows you missed the next part where you had to type in ls and press enter or return, which ever one that computer uses, to show a list of the volumes.Keep going, you almost there :).
This happens on linux as well.Once you figure out how to fix it, it's pretty easy, and you can do it in just a few moments.
Although you can clean up stale links in Linux, a lot easier with a cron job or script during bootup or shutdown...
I went with the cron job myself :)
I have no idea how to set up an automated way of doing it on a Mac...but it would probably be helpful if someone did. That way, it would easy for cases like this...just run the script, clear out the stale links, plug in and your content is back.
If the drive can't be configured to not go to sleep, it's easy to write a script or utility that writes a small file to the drive regularly, keeping it from going to sleep. Here's one for Windows, if anyone should need it:
http://taosoft.dk/software/freeware/drivealive/
look what I found :)
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20011024160033481
this keeps the drive "awake"
in the discusion, there are several more ways of doing it